Analysis of the 14 July 2015 Nocturnal Convective Initiation Event During the PECAN Field Campaign

During the summer of 2015, multiple agencies and universities came together to participate in a field project named Plains Elevated Convection At Night (PECAN). One of the objectives of this field campaign was to measure and to better understand nocturnal convective initiation (NCI) over the Plains. On 14 July 2015, a boundary moved over the western part of the PECAN domain, which included western Kansas and southwestern Nebraska, spawning NCI on the northern end of the boundary and a mesoscale convective system on the southern end. This boundary is believed to be a gust front driven by cold pool expansion that destabilized the boundary layer initiating convection. This presentation will display data from the UAH Mobile Alabama X-Band (MAX) and the UAH Mobile Integrated Profiling System (MIPS) collected during this deployment and explain more about how this boundary was responsible for this NCI event.